In response to Mr Saunders' letter regarding his concerns that the analogue television switch-off will lead to scrapped TVs (Letters, January 10), his local television shop told him that a TV required a Scart socket to use a Freeview digital TV box. It seems they are either displaying technical ignorance or are leading him up the garden path - at the end of which is a sales counter, a credit card machine and a new television.

This type of misleading advice dished out to consumers is, sadly, not uncommon.

Scart connections are convenient but are certainly not a necessity. A Freeview box with an RF loopthrough (which practically all have) will output a signal down the aerial lead connection into the back of the TV.

All that needs to be done is to have a free channel number on the TV, such as 0 or 6, tuned to that frequency. Changing the channels on the box will change the channel displayed on the TV.

You can take this idea further and loop the box via aerial cable into a VCR and then into the TV. This enables video recording as well.

Also switching off the analogue signals will make more power available for the transmission of the digital signals, improving the signal strength, thus meaning that even if some people cannot receive digital TV now, this will be widely improved, if not completely fixed, when the full switchover occurs.

  • Tony Davenport, Vernon Terrace Brighton